


Farewell, Brother. Farewell, Mother

by allapplesfall



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, I'm a horrible person, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 21:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3503753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allapplesfall/pseuds/allapplesfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the books, Rosethorn survives the pneumonia. In the books, Briar and the girls pull her out. In the books, Sandry gets to Briar quick enough. In the books, they all live. </p>
<p>Or that fic where I decide to be a horrible person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Farewell, Brother. Farewell, Mother

            Sandry roused to a thud and a gagging sound. She scrambled out of bed, but her legs caught and she fell to the floor. Cursing, she stood and raced to Rosethorn’s room. She arrived just in time to see Briar throw all his magic into Rosethorn, and could only watch as it dwindled from view. 

“Tris! Daja!” she screamed, but she knew they would be too late.

She tried to force her way in after him, intent on saving them both, trying to catch Briar in a fine net of power. Her reach wasn’t far enough, and all of a sudden Tris and Daja were there, joining her in the helplessness of watching two of their loved ones fall away. Once again, Sandrilene fa Toren could do nothing.

Somehow the three of them untangled themselves from the fading life-forces. Sandry came to the realization that she was sobbing, bent over Briar’s body where it lay, still clutching Rosethorn’s hand. Daja was kneeling behind her, while Tris crumpled next to her, joining her in her tears. If Daja cried, Sandry couldn’t hear it.

Then Lark was rushing in and Moonstream was there, and out of the corner of her eye Sandry could see Niko standing in the doorway. His eyes were wide with shock. 

Lark rushed to Rosethorn’s bedside, her hand moving to cup her lover’s face. The moment their skin touched, Lark began to weep, and Sandry knew Lark had sensed the same darkness that she had. Moonstream’s gold-bordered blue habit was all Sandry could make out of her. By that point, her eyes were too blurry.

  

 

The days after were cast in shadow.

Sandry lay in her bed, completely clad in her black mourning. Her eyes remained trained on the ceiling, just as they had for those weeks after the death of her parents and Pirisi. Daja, Tris, and Niko brought her food, but she felt disconnected from them. What was the point of living, she wondered, if everyone she loved just got taken away? She didn’t cry, just let her dry eyes try to make sense of a meaningless thing.

 

Tris had never had someone she loved die before. Her Aunt Muriel had died, but that had afforded Tris no sadness, just resignation. Resignation to moving on to another house where no one cared about her. She was learning that staying put brought a whole different brand of pain. Lark, when she wasn’t locked in her room crying, altered one of Sandry’s many mourning outfits to fit Tris’s larger frame. Tris wore that as she bustled around the cottage, cleaning everything till it shone. The only rooms that remained untouched by anyone were Rosethorn’s, Briar’s, and Rosethorn’s workshop. Tris sobbed every night, feeling as if her heart might burn a hole straight through her sternum.

 

Daja took out her scarlet mourning clothes, which she had not touched since Lark had made her arm and headbands for the forge. She helped the men dig the graves near the garden, not caring that it stained the expensive tunic. It seemed right to her that the dirt of the garden that Briar and Rosethorn had loved so well would color the fabric that she wore in their honor. She added them to the prayers that she spoke each night for her family, but in the back of her mind a voice whispered that the Trader and Bookkeeper were settling her books for giving up _T’sawha_ ways. She had turned her back on her people, so perhaps now she was destined to never find family. When she cried, she did so in the way she was taught; silently.

  

Lark was a wreck. The alterations she made to Tris’s new mourning were amateur at best, made with shaky hands. Tears were easy to spring to her eyes, even if it was as simple as the greens on her dinner plate were wilted. She was used to this period of mourning. She had felt it at the death of her husband, then of her children. She had thought she would never find love again, and then she had found her Rosie and had found new children, beautiful children that she had come to love as her own. And now her Rosie was gone too, and her new son with her.

On the third day of her isolated grief, Crane came and found her. He brought some expensive spirits with him, and together they drank and reminisced. Unexpectedly, he was the one to remind Lark of her duty to the remaining children. They had just lost a brother and a mother, he noted, and they didn’t need to lose Lark while they were at it. Spurred on by his words, Lark started helping Tris clean, began sitting with Sandry, stroking her forehead, and prayed each night with Daja at the altar in the living room. Three of her kids were still there, and she would continue to take care of them.

 

 

The day of the funeral was cloudy. There were light showers throughout the morning, giving everything a reflective coating. The garden smelled of wet soil, the earthy scent clogging everyone’s throats. The graves were dug, and Briar and Rosethorn lay peacefully side by side.

Planted directly above them were two saplings, twin redwoods. The two trees were surrounded by freshly transplanted rosebushes and briar brambles, each plant standing isolated in its own patch of dirt.

Rings of people encircled the burial site, all holding hands. In the first ring stood the residents of Discipline, Niko, Frostpine, Crane, Moonstream, and three other novices that the three girls didn’t know. Behind them stood all the dedicates and novices who had at one time worked with Rosethorn, and behind them all the other temple-dwellers who had come to pay their respects.

Lark stepped forward, breaking the inner circle, and picked up a wooden bucket that was sitting by her feet. Carefully, the dedicate maneuvered her way through the thorns to gently pour well-water on the roots of each of the plants. Then she removed a bundle from a pocket of her habit, a little parcel of  cream fabric. Mediocre embroidery stitches decorated it, and Lark knew that if she unfolded it she would be able to see the likeness of a bird and a flower sewn into the material. A Lark and a Rose. Kneeling down, she dug a small hole by the base of Rosethorn’s sapling and lay the embroidery inside. Tears now streaming down her face, she pushed the displaced dirt back on top of it and rejoined the circle.

Now it was Tris, Daja, and Sandry’s turn to step forward. Sandry walked in the middle, Tris and Daja flanking her on either side, and in her hands the young noble carried a loop of lumpy thread. As the three drew closer to Briar’s sapling they each put their hand over their respective knot. Combined in their magic, they shivered in unison. Using their circle felt empty and cold without Briar. His absence left a gaping whole, such that they could never unite to the full extent they could before. The circle no longer brought the empowering cohesion it once did.

 The girls were still entwined, of course, but this lumpy cord was no longer _them_. It represented the _them_ of before, the _them_ that included Briar. So they followed Lark’s example, and Daja dug a small hole, Sandry lay the circle in, and Tris covered it back up again. As one they stood, Sandry and Daja each placing the flat of their palms on the thin bark of Briar’s tree. The girls held hands, eyes closed.

 _Goodbye, Briar,_ Sandry thought.

 _We’ll meet you, kid. On the other side,_ Daja promised.

 _Goodbye,_ Tris managed.

Together they chorused, _Farewell, Brother. Farewell, Mother._       

They dropped their hands and melted back into the ring of people. Slowly, hums started to fill the air, growing louder until the entire temple seemed to vibrate with grief.

            

One day, years later, a young girl named Evvy would be polishing her stones for a man in a Chammur marketplace. For the briefest moment, the hair on the back of her neck would prickle, and she would look up. She’d search the marketplace for something ( _a flash of a silk shirt, grey green eyes, tattooed hands)_ without knowing why. Then her boss would snap at her not to get distracted, and she would turn back to her stones, ignoring the emptiness that would settle into the pit of her stomach.

 

On the other side, Rosethorn and Briar surveyed their new terrain. They had a long way to go.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this late at night, so hopefully it turns out okay. Thanks for reading!


End file.
